1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus for sequentially recording an original image onto an elongated microfilm as a recording medium.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, as a typical image recording apparatus of this type, a rotary camera is known. The rotary camera will be exemplified below.
The rotary camera is an automatic phototaking apparatus which sequentially receives documents (or references) to be preserved as microfilms, e.g., bills, checks, stocks, documents, books, and the like, sequentially performs phototaking operations of image data of the documents on an elongated film, and exhausts the photographed documents outside the apparatus.
In some phototaking apparatuses of this type, code information (index information) represented by numerals or characters can be photograph on a film in addition to the image data to facilitate retrieval of the image data after the film is developed.
The code information may be a date or numerals in units of a given image group size, characters or symbols representing the content of an image, or the like.
Code information representing the content of an image group of a given size is recorded before or after the image group, and thereafter, a large number of recorded image groups are cut into pieces, and are classified to manage or edit the image groups. However, in the prior art, if the same code information appears repetitively, the contents of the image groups or the recording order of the image groups cannot be identified.
If code information such as numerals is photographed on each frame of a recorded image, the above-mentioned problem can be solved. However, the apparatus becomes expensive. When code information is photograph on an inter-frame portion of adjacent images, an image recording capacity per film is decreased, and this may disturb a process for high-speed photographing.
If code information is photographed on a non-inter-frame portion (upper or lower side of each frame) of an image, a photographable object size is undesirably decreased in order to assure a recording space for code information.